What Are You Reading Wednesday...
Aug. 26th, 2015 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxWhat have I just finished reading?
Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig
Having read it, I get why she's categorized under a number of different categories. It's not really a mystery. It's not really a spy novel. It is a romance but to be perfectly honest it has more of a chick-lit vibe. It's that vibe I think that isn't working for me.
Though the plot in no way resembles Meg Cabot's Insatiable,something about it kept pinging the same reaction in my head. I think part of it was the flat wry tone and the deliberate quippiness. I think the other part was that it's almost self consciously ticking off 'girl power'. I love a good feminist heroine, even in-your-face ones (see Courtney Milan's Suffragette Scandal). What rubs me wrong is when a book inspires a reaction of 'please, get off my side, you're making it look stupid!).
I remember when reading Cabot's insatiable becoming quite testy. That book was all about being meta about vampire fiction. It was critiquing the sexist aspect of romantic vampire fiction, however it was blind to its own sexism. (Basically it contained a lot of policing of women's sexual fantasies and mansplaining about it - it literally had a male lead constantly policing and mansplaining to young women. It got to be enough that I started to root for the vampire to kill the smug, preachy couple).
This book wasn't that, but I have to say what bothered me was the girl power/female empowerment coupled with a whole lot of stupid and a frankly dilletante heroine.
The book has two modes. The present mode of a female historian who did her thesis on a 19th Century female spy. The plot in the present is not only a waste but utterly stupid and pointless. I know I was to be amused by the quirkiness but I simply wondered why it was there and why they were ridiculous. Mostly, I think it was there to fan girl the 18th/19th century heroine. Who was apparently brilliant and legendary. Whatever.
This brings us to the lead of the Napoleonic era plot that forms most of the book. The heroine: she's beautiful! Strikingly, delicately beautiful... But she can also pass for a man in close quarters for weeks on end without anyone noticing! She's brilliant (never saw evidence of this.) she's legendary! She's relentlessly logical... Except for the part where she blames a guy she never met who doesn't know her for all that was wrong in her life.
See she was this master spy in the French court who returned to England when her sister ran away from boarding school on an adventure with her roommate searching for a treasure the hero had sent to HIS kid sister. And there was some French double agent spy she was having a flirtation turned affair with that eventually led to huge heroine's parents (her parents!!!) discovering her spyness, her French cover being blown, and her parents giving her an ultimatum to stop being a spy or be disowned. She chose disowning and an affair with the French spy who exposed her. So, clearly it's all the fault of the guy she never met and who doesn't know her, and not at all her being inept enough to get caught by her freaking non-spy parents, or her flirtation and affair with French revolutionary turned Napoleonic spy. No. It's the guy she's never mets fault, and she's held a grudge against him for years, and when she blames him to his face for it...he agrees it's all his fault.
What?
No, hon. The heroine made choices. It was her choices that led to her exposure and disowning.
And as asshole as it was for her parents to disown her, they did it over shit she actually did. IOW--the truth. So why is she, he, and the damn novel willing to blame the hero --who hadn't even met her then-- for it?
Oh, and while she may be a spy, it's not because she's a government spy. No, this is just something she decided to do with no training. She's self-created and self-employed. She's a society dilletante who made this whole espionage lifestyle up to tinker with Napoleonic politics without any direct government involvement. She was living off her parents allowance then off her friends book royalties. So, she's not even an actual professional spy. Except she's treated like it. And she's brilliant!!!! And skilled... Apart from the fact that her French cover was blown by her affair with a French agent and that she was exposed by her own non-spy parents.
But she's brilliant --practically omniscient (this is said more than once) nonetheless. Everyone past and present agrees.
In 2015 a historian is writing her dissertation on this brilliant young female spy (who was caught and disowned by her parents)
So, because she can't return to France (because her cover was blownby her own damn choices by the hero sending home a treasure for his kid sister's dowry, the heroine is in Portugal to find the missing crazed queen, and she is paired with the hero double agent, the one who ruined her life even though he doesn't know a damn thing about her and has never even been to England.
Oh, and se's really pissed that he was a traitor to England...
Um... About that. See, the hero is the son of a British mid-level officer stationed in Indis and a girl from India. He's the illegitimate son. Yes, the girl had been high status, but the British officer never married her. She was disowned by her family (probably lucky she wasn't an honor killing) but became a miserable mistress to the British officer until the day she committed suicide in front of her 3 year old son, who is not accepted by either his British or his Indian grandparents. His father has him raised in India by an Indian nanny who the father created two more illegitimate children with. ( But now his father is married the heroine's British best friend. Yeah..,)
Because the hero had an Indian mother, despite his British father, by law he is not allowed into the British army or the British diplomatic corp. Being half-Indian, he's pretty much denied entrance into the world his father inhabits. Is he even considered to be British in the first place, then? Or just subject to British colonial rule? You can see where he got attracted to the French Revolutionary cries of liberty, equality, and fraternity. He took that thought seriously until he saw the seedy underbelly. It was rather myopically British for the heroine to consider him a traitor. What had Britain ever done but marginalize him?
He had turned on the French when they had begun canabalizing the revolutionaries when Napoleon started toward world domination.
So he's assigned to help the British Agent (the heroine) find the missing Queen Maria. A plot I'm supposed to find interesting but which seemed to consist of riding in circles, a bath in a hot spring, and an overnight stay in an Abbey only for her to conclude that they had missed the queen in the very first spot they had been! (but the heroine is brilliant, legendary, always right, and downright omniscient!..,or so we are told)
So after all that meandering, it turns out that it's her ex boyfriend the French spy who has had the Queen the whole damn time. And the heroine's brilliant plan is to march straight up to his fortress, announce herself as his mistress, drug the exboyfriend, and somehow miraculously free the queen and both escape while the hero goes for help.
This is not at all a very stupid and reckless plat (yes it is).
But the hero goes along and when he reaches help no one is concerned because the heroine is brilliant and skilled and her plans always work out (except that one foiled by her own parents).
But... Well, of course her plan did work (because of course it did). Turned out double agent ex boyfriend wants to be triple agent, or rather he wants to turn British and he was stealing the queen for the British all along.
Anyone remember the Big Bang Theory episode pointing out that Indiana Jones accomplished virtually nothing plot-wise in Raiders because the Nazis planned to go to the island and open the ark all along and thus would have had their faces melted off regardless?
Well, this is the same thing. The French spy stole the queen and planned to deliver her to the English the whole damn time. And the heroine's adventures were not as entertaining as indy's.
But she's brilliant and talented and a great (free-lance unaffiliated) spy (except where French agents or parents are concerned) who...is totally irrelevant to the end result of the plot.
But she's awesome, y'all!
It was like it was to be making a feminist statement how awesome, independent, and powerful she was. Everyone acknowledges her proficiency and the hero not only trusts her to handle it all on her own his end contribution was simply to contact the British agents to turn over the queen. See how female centic this is... As long as you ignore the actual plot. The one where she lives off her parents (and later her employed friend) to finance her playing spy until she became the infatuated dupe of a French spy, had her cover blown by her parents, blamed all her problems on a total stranger, ran around Portugal pointlessly, and ultimately resorted to trying to seduce her ex boyfriend to accomplish her mission, only to be utterly irrelevant to the plot!
As long as you listen to what you're told --she's brilliant! Skilled! Nigh infallible! --- and don't believe your lying eyes it all girl power yay!
Er...please, get off my side, book. It's looking kind of dumb. I would prefer 1/10th as much heroine praise and 70% more verifiable competency.
And I could get on the heroes (largely unresolved Daddy issues, but that seems like a lot of extra work
There is a chick-lit audience for this book. I've read other books with similar tones. The author is a historian so the mad queen was apparently an actual thing. But general writing competency aside I disliked the bratty aspects of the heroines (both of them past and present) and some of the heroes wangst about Daddy.
2*. Competent but not my thing.
Did I mention that both the French triple agent AND the hero proposed to her in the last chaper? Because, that also happened.
Yeah.
::head shake::
Female centric 19th century spy novels I'd recommend over this one. : Christi Caldwell's My Lady Deception, Jessie Clever's To Save a Viscount or Inevitably a Duchess. And I'm thinking of sampling Joanna Bourne's Rogue Spy.
Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig
Having read it, I get why she's categorized under a number of different categories. It's not really a mystery. It's not really a spy novel. It is a romance but to be perfectly honest it has more of a chick-lit vibe. It's that vibe I think that isn't working for me.
Though the plot in no way resembles Meg Cabot's Insatiable,something about it kept pinging the same reaction in my head. I think part of it was the flat wry tone and the deliberate quippiness. I think the other part was that it's almost self consciously ticking off 'girl power'. I love a good feminist heroine, even in-your-face ones (see Courtney Milan's Suffragette Scandal). What rubs me wrong is when a book inspires a reaction of 'please, get off my side, you're making it look stupid!).
I remember when reading Cabot's insatiable becoming quite testy. That book was all about being meta about vampire fiction. It was critiquing the sexist aspect of romantic vampire fiction, however it was blind to its own sexism. (Basically it contained a lot of policing of women's sexual fantasies and mansplaining about it - it literally had a male lead constantly policing and mansplaining to young women. It got to be enough that I started to root for the vampire to kill the smug, preachy couple).
This book wasn't that, but I have to say what bothered me was the girl power/female empowerment coupled with a whole lot of stupid and a frankly dilletante heroine.
The book has two modes. The present mode of a female historian who did her thesis on a 19th Century female spy. The plot in the present is not only a waste but utterly stupid and pointless. I know I was to be amused by the quirkiness but I simply wondered why it was there and why they were ridiculous. Mostly, I think it was there to fan girl the 18th/19th century heroine. Who was apparently brilliant and legendary. Whatever.
This brings us to the lead of the Napoleonic era plot that forms most of the book. The heroine: she's beautiful! Strikingly, delicately beautiful... But she can also pass for a man in close quarters for weeks on end without anyone noticing! She's brilliant (never saw evidence of this.) she's legendary! She's relentlessly logical... Except for the part where she blames a guy she never met who doesn't know her for all that was wrong in her life.
See she was this master spy in the French court who returned to England when her sister ran away from boarding school on an adventure with her roommate searching for a treasure the hero had sent to HIS kid sister. And there was some French double agent spy she was having a flirtation turned affair with that eventually led to huge heroine's parents (her parents!!!) discovering her spyness, her French cover being blown, and her parents giving her an ultimatum to stop being a spy or be disowned. She chose disowning and an affair with the French spy who exposed her. So, clearly it's all the fault of the guy she never met and who doesn't know her, and not at all her being inept enough to get caught by her freaking non-spy parents, or her flirtation and affair with French revolutionary turned Napoleonic spy. No. It's the guy she's never mets fault, and she's held a grudge against him for years, and when she blames him to his face for it...he agrees it's all his fault.
What?
No, hon. The heroine made choices. It was her choices that led to her exposure and disowning.
And as asshole as it was for her parents to disown her, they did it over shit she actually did. IOW--the truth. So why is she, he, and the damn novel willing to blame the hero --who hadn't even met her then-- for it?
Oh, and while she may be a spy, it's not because she's a government spy. No, this is just something she decided to do with no training. She's self-created and self-employed. She's a society dilletante who made this whole espionage lifestyle up to tinker with Napoleonic politics without any direct government involvement. She was living off her parents allowance then off her friends book royalties. So, she's not even an actual professional spy. Except she's treated like it. And she's brilliant!!!! And skilled... Apart from the fact that her French cover was blown by her affair with a French agent and that she was exposed by her own non-spy parents.
But she's brilliant --practically omniscient (this is said more than once) nonetheless. Everyone past and present agrees.
In 2015 a historian is writing her dissertation on this brilliant young female spy (who was caught and disowned by her parents)
So, because she can't return to France (because her cover was blown
Oh, and se's really pissed that he was a traitor to England...
Um... About that. See, the hero is the son of a British mid-level officer stationed in Indis and a girl from India. He's the illegitimate son. Yes, the girl had been high status, but the British officer never married her. She was disowned by her family (probably lucky she wasn't an honor killing) but became a miserable mistress to the British officer until the day she committed suicide in front of her 3 year old son, who is not accepted by either his British or his Indian grandparents. His father has him raised in India by an Indian nanny who the father created two more illegitimate children with. ( But now his father is married the heroine's British best friend. Yeah..,)
Because the hero had an Indian mother, despite his British father, by law he is not allowed into the British army or the British diplomatic corp. Being half-Indian, he's pretty much denied entrance into the world his father inhabits. Is he even considered to be British in the first place, then? Or just subject to British colonial rule? You can see where he got attracted to the French Revolutionary cries of liberty, equality, and fraternity. He took that thought seriously until he saw the seedy underbelly. It was rather myopically British for the heroine to consider him a traitor. What had Britain ever done but marginalize him?
He had turned on the French when they had begun canabalizing the revolutionaries when Napoleon started toward world domination.
So he's assigned to help the British Agent (the heroine) find the missing Queen Maria. A plot I'm supposed to find interesting but which seemed to consist of riding in circles, a bath in a hot spring, and an overnight stay in an Abbey only for her to conclude that they had missed the queen in the very first spot they had been! (but the heroine is brilliant, legendary, always right, and downright omniscient!..,or so we are told)
So after all that meandering, it turns out that it's her ex boyfriend the French spy who has had the Queen the whole damn time. And the heroine's brilliant plan is to march straight up to his fortress, announce herself as his mistress, drug the exboyfriend, and somehow miraculously free the queen and both escape while the hero goes for help.
This is not at all a very stupid and reckless plat (yes it is).
But the hero goes along and when he reaches help no one is concerned because the heroine is brilliant and skilled and her plans always work out (except that one foiled by her own parents).
But... Well, of course her plan did work (because of course it did). Turned out double agent ex boyfriend wants to be triple agent, or rather he wants to turn British and he was stealing the queen for the British all along.
Anyone remember the Big Bang Theory episode pointing out that Indiana Jones accomplished virtually nothing plot-wise in Raiders because the Nazis planned to go to the island and open the ark all along and thus would have had their faces melted off regardless?
Well, this is the same thing. The French spy stole the queen and planned to deliver her to the English the whole damn time. And the heroine's adventures were not as entertaining as indy's.
But she's brilliant and talented and a great (free-lance unaffiliated) spy (except where French agents or parents are concerned) who...is totally irrelevant to the end result of the plot.
But she's awesome, y'all!
It was like it was to be making a feminist statement how awesome, independent, and powerful she was. Everyone acknowledges her proficiency and the hero not only trusts her to handle it all on her own his end contribution was simply to contact the British agents to turn over the queen. See how female centic this is... As long as you ignore the actual plot. The one where she lives off her parents (and later her employed friend) to finance her playing spy until she became the infatuated dupe of a French spy, had her cover blown by her parents, blamed all her problems on a total stranger, ran around Portugal pointlessly, and ultimately resorted to trying to seduce her ex boyfriend to accomplish her mission, only to be utterly irrelevant to the plot!
As long as you listen to what you're told --she's brilliant! Skilled! Nigh infallible! --- and don't believe your lying eyes it all girl power yay!
Er...please, get off my side, book. It's looking kind of dumb. I would prefer 1/10th as much heroine praise and 70% more verifiable competency.
And I could get on the heroes (largely unresolved Daddy issues, but that seems like a lot of extra work
There is a chick-lit audience for this book. I've read other books with similar tones. The author is a historian so the mad queen was apparently an actual thing. But general writing competency aside I disliked the bratty aspects of the heroines (both of them past and present) and some of the heroes wangst about Daddy.
2*. Competent but not my thing.
Did I mention that both the French triple agent AND the hero proposed to her in the last chaper? Because, that also happened.
Yeah.
::head shake::
Female centric 19th century spy novels I'd recommend over this one. : Christi Caldwell's My Lady Deception, Jessie Clever's To Save a Viscount or Inevitably a Duchess. And I'm thinking of sampling Joanna Bourne's Rogue Spy.
